Lines of Bitterness
by azayana
Summary: Against the backdrop of a war, Roy finds himself lost and searching for a woman he knew too well. Instead, he finds a girl he doesn’t know at all. And if he wants to find Riza, then he has to confront his own demons first. [AU] [Roy x Riza, Ed x Winry]
1. road to shangri la

_Summary:_ Amidst the backdrop of a World War, four people struggle to survive. An ex-officer in the army fleeing from those he once called friends; a mechanic stranded and alone in a place she is unfamiliar to; an alchemist running from monsters that threaten to reveal all he knows and a soldier declared to be dead and hiding in alleyways for her life. Not quite AU

**_NOTE:_** Not set in FMA world, but not in ours either. Some kind of combination of the two - a world with a World War II, but also a world with alchemy, where the Homunculi are not quite Homunculi. Main characters are Roy and Winry, but under Roy/Riza because she gets _really_ important later. It's not a Roy/Winry anyways. It's Royai.  
The whole story drips vagueness.  
I wrote this_ ages_ ago, but I only just remembered it existed.

* * *

_**Arc I: beginnings  
**_**road to shangri-la **

* * *

Their country had seen its glory days, and outlived them. Roy knows this better than anyone as a soldier and officer and god knows what else. He knows the reasons too. The glory days lived and died with the Alchemists, and when most of them left after the Ban, the glory days left too.

He is one of the few remaining. Sometimes he wishes he'd left, but it is too late to turn back now.

Roy does not dwell on this too long. He has a long road ahead of him, and he might never find his way back, so he keeps walking and shuts it out of his mind.

He _will_ reach Shangri-La someday.

* * *

Someday does not come for a long time, and summer is receding into autumn by the time he has even made it to the halfway point. He wonders privately if he will ever reach the hidden refuge, and wonders if he is even going in the right direction.

Wonders if they will even accept, being from the military and all. But he leaves his past behind the dust, and keeps walking.

It is his sole hope of finding Riza.

* * *

Days pass, stretch into weeks, stretch into months. Three months since he started running, and his body is showing the toll of such a journey. He dares not venture into shops, for fear that he may be recognised, so he lives on stale bread and dirty water and scraps from rubbish bins when he can get them. The rest of the time he goes hungry. He forages newspapers from dumpsters, pores over them in the day and sleeps under them at night.

When he sees the article about Maes Hughes, his world drops out from under him and he finds it hard to breathe. His journey becomes not just a hunt for Riza, but for Maes too. Then Breda. Then Havoc. The list grows and grows with every passing week. The newspaper articles are short and gloss over the details. They are dead, the articles claim.

He knows the claims are because of the Fuhrer exerting his pressure on the editors. Hopes, really, because for all he knows, they might well be.

So he tucks his pictures and articles away and feels for the files and clutches at them all night.

He needs to get them somewhere safe, and he dearly hopes that his destination has escaped the taint of the army.

* * *

It is a Thursday when he meets her, a little fragile slip of a thing, though he can tell she wasn't always so fragile. She has blue eyes that look more than a little jaded and blonde hair that reminds him faintly of Riza.

She is not really fragile, but she certainly looks it. He asks for her name and she does not answer.

"Winry Rockbell," she says some time later.

_Rockbell._ A name that brings back memories of a past he left behind and reminds him of the sharp odour of smoke billowing in the crisp night air. He firmly pushes this out of his mind.

"I'm Roy. Roy Mustang."

* * *

He grows to think of her as his little sister, despite the fact she is almost young enough to be his daughter. And as they draw closer to their destination, she gradually begins to remind him even more of Riza.

It depresses him, and he has no earthly idea _why_ she reminds him of her. They do not look alike, save for the same build and hair, and they do not act alike. It does not matter that much now, anyways. He imagines his old friends around him, and for the time being, it is enough.

At times he wonders about why Winry rarely ever speaks and exactly what in her life she is missing he does not know, though he has a feeling he knows the answer to that question. She is closed off behind doors that she locked sometime long ago, and he has a feeling she threw away the key.

But he does not ask and she offers nothing.

* * *

One day she finally says something about her past. She says nothing of family, instead choosing to talk about a boy with gold hair and gold eyes and an incurable shortness.

"Sounds like someone I knew." Roy does not mention the name Edward Elric, because it was taboo in the military and old habits die hard (and Ed was _not_ his friend, just an acquaintance and don't think about that, don't, because he's one of the reasons Riza's gone). But Winry says nothing about a brother, so he assumes it is merely a coincidence.

"Is he there?"

She pauses. "I don't know."

"But you wish you did."

She just sighs and smiles.

"Yeah, I wish I did."

* * *

When they are mere days away from the end of their journey, though neither knows that, Winry makes Roy promise her something.

"Don't abandon me there."

He nods and promises, because he senses she has lost too many people, and it wouldn't be fair to make her lose someone else.

* * *

The road to Shangri-la is almost at an end and both of them sense it eventually.

Roy thinks he just might miss it.


	2. god forbid

_Arc I: Part II  
_**god forbid **

* * *

Shangri-la is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places Roy has ever seen. He thinks it fits its name.

He does not miss the fact that the place is so obviously kept running on Alchemy. They arrive there in late autumn, where everywhere else the leaves are brown and dry and carpet the ground. Yet there the leaves are green and glossy and branches are drip so heavily with flowers he wonders why they have not broken yet.

They are welcomed with open arms, though Roy does not miss the suspicious glances shot his way at times.

He resigns himself to it.

* * *

Winry revels in the sheer beauty of the place. She is a mechanic, but she is still a fifteen-year-old girl and he thinks that he would actually be somewhat worried if she didn't. The person she seeks so badly is not there, and Roy is almost scared as to how she will react.

She doesn't, just accepts it and tries to move on.

"I want to start over," she tells him one night over dinner in the hall.

He frowns and swallows his mouthful of soup.

"What do you mean, start over?"

She looks at him.

"You know what I mean." She says this in such a flat voice that he immediately regrets the question.

He knows exactly what she means, and it scares him. Because if she can move on, so can he.

He simply doesn't want to.

* * *

Roy has skeletons in his closet. Winry knows this, but she does not know the truth.

He hopes she never has to. Regret clouds his mind everytime he looks at her, and his senses bring back acrid smoke and flames; the smell of cotton burning.

His gloves are ashes and cinders now, blown away by the east wind.

_They never found their bodies,_ he wants to tell her, but he's worried she'll ask how he knows. He wouldn't be able to answer.

* * *

One day he truly really hopes Ed will forgive him for not leaving. It is that awkward moment where he fights with himself over whether or not the boy was his friend.

Neither side wins, and he sighs and accepts the fact neither side probably ever will. It is beyond unlikely he will _ever_ see the Elrics again, and if he does, he will deal with that when it happens.

He does not admit he is trying to put it off, because it might complicate things.

* * *

Winry knows Roy is hiding things from her, but she does not question. Whatever happened in his past is the past now, and she is sure he is a good person.

She comes close to asking him about Ed and Al sometimes, because he was in the military, and _did he know them_ and _where are they, do you know_, but she never gets around to it.

She thinks she's scared of what his answer will be. She does not know he is mulling over the same person.

Now and then she gets the feeling that when he looks at her he doesn't see her, but someone else. This is another one of the questions she has never got around to asking him. She suspects that whomever he sees in her is someone he lost. Lost like she lost Ed, not lost to death.

But she does not question, just watches and observes. Questions what happened to the old, cheerful, bad-tempered, _innocent_ Winry, and what on earth she could have done to have changed into such an emotionless being.

Only she is not emotionless, and that is the problem. She is not nearly emotionless enough.

* * *

"You don't speak. Why is that?" It is a question asked suddenly at lunch, with no pre-emptory warning or any such thing.

The answer is because if she does, she is scared everything will come flooding out in a great huge torrent of pain and grief and loss, and she will _never ever_ be able to go back. So she just shrugs.

"Don't want to."

He stares at her, something like sympathy in his eyes.

She hates that look, like she is something to be pitied. She does not know it is because sometimes he feels the same way.

* * *

Old Roy was arrogant and egomaniacal, or so Riza claimed. New Roy has long stopped thinking of Riza, because it makes him regret and brings about an air of longing.

He shakes his head to clear it, because God forbid he ever thinks of Riza in that way.

_Too late. _

* * *

Old Winry was optimistic to a fault, happy, and threw spanners at Ed's head. New Winry does not talk and wishes she could have Ed back again and she'd never ever throw things at him again if she did.

She shakes her head to clear it, because God forbid she ever thinks of Ed in that way.

_But she already has, so does it matter?_

* * *

Winter passes slowly, each day dragging on at the fabric of time. He is not sure if it is just Shangri-la, but since their trip finished, time seems to have passed slowly. He is not sure either if he likes the fact that in this place, it is as if time and seasons simply cease to exist. There is no differentiating between autumn and summer and winter and spring, and each second almost seems to last an eternity.

Roy likes Shangri-la well enough, but he is not sure if wants to spend eternity here. _Look for Riza, remember_, he tells himself, because it will make sure he never ever wants to stay here for good.

He cannot. He has places to go and things left unsaid, and he can't stay.

He doesn't really want to either.

* * *

**A/N:** This has been sitting on my hard-drive for quite some time now, but I couldn't find it. Turned out it was saved under the wrong name in the wrong folder. So apologies for the long wait...

I should mention that this fits neither into the anime universe or the manga one. It's a combination.


End file.
